One of the greatest aspects of the British music scene is that everyone has the ability to start a band. We understand that it isn’t easy to get to grips with and therefore want to give our future Glasto headliners a helping hand. Coming out of Stevenage we have Timeless Lizards. We had a quick chat with them to find out what they’re all about.
Stephen McMahon: Tell us about your aims when creating music, and where does that aim stem from?
Timeless Lizards: Well we are all very keen on building a career out of this, but we also want a style of music that can be appealing to most people of walks of life, when writing a song my own personal aim is that the rest of the band will enjoy playing that song and I would like them to expand it in every way they can so we can form the best version of it.
Stephen McMahon: What was the catalyst for picking up instruments and wanting to start a band?
Timeless Lizards: Me and my twin brother ollie (lead singer/guitarist) live in a very musical household, our dad plays keyboards as a session player with lots of big names, and also is a producer. Ollie and I have been around a studio and lots of musicians for many years and naturally we just picked up instruments and it goes from there really.
Stephen McMahon: We’re you very influential to music when growing up or did you establish your own musical preferences?
Timeless Lizards: Ollie has taken mostly all his influences from The Beatles all his life, he absolutely worships George Harrison but is also is very keen on tame impala and things similar to that, Tame impala are like the modern day Beatles. I always appreciated The Beatles but I take my influences from The Police, particularly Sting. After watching a documentary film about him I was even more hooked on bass and realised it was after all the best instrument ever. Our older brother and dad have shown us lots other great bands too, things like Blur, Superfood, Kings of Leon, Demob Happy and Bombay Bicycle Club. Aaron (guitarist) also likes this as well, but Jordan (drummer) takes a big hip hop influence and you can definitely notice this in his playing.
Stephen McMahon: Tell us about what it was like when you first started writing?
Timeless Lizards: Ollie and I have been writing together for ages, but also write independently. We were in a couple of bands before Timeless Lizards and sometimes we have a listen to the songs we wrote then, compared to what we’re writing now and it was rubbish, but you have to start somewhere. Ollies writing has excelled massively because he decided to learn every Beatle song so he is open to all the strange chord progressions they use, he incorporates all of this into our songs.
Stephen McMahon: What’s the music scene like in Stevenage at the moment?
Timeless Lizards: Any band recommendations? The music scene in Stevenage is bland there’s never anything going on, It hasn’t got a suitable venue for bands to play unlike towns like Hitchin and Bedford. There’s one amazing Stevenage band called “Waste” They are a bit like queens of the stone age and arctic monkeys but much heavier and tighter and easily are the best band in Hertfordshire at the moment and superbly great live, they’re releasing their EP in September so watch out for that.
Stephen McMahon: You recently performed at Chillfest. Tell us about that?
Timeless Lizards: Chillfest was a great experience for all of us, we had never played on a stage that big before. Everything was just on a new level and everyone was so nice to us which we really didn’t expect. We were first on that day and kicked off the festival off, Aswad, Heather Small and UB40 were on after us that evening.
Stephen McMahon: What and who influences you musically?
Timeless Lizards: Definitely the Beatles, The Police, more recently Demob Happy. Mine and Ollie’s dad is very influential on us too, we learn something new from him every day.
Stephen McMahon: Describe your songwriting process?
Timeless Lizards: Most of the time Ollies writes a song, starts with a chord progression and comes up with a melody and will record a demo, the rest of us pick up our parts and go to rehearsal and we’ll just work out the song together, but initially ollies the primary songwriter.
Stephen McMahon: What was it like being featured in 3 countries?
Timeless Lizards: We uploaded our Track DAZE to BBC introducing and they picked it up in a day or two which was great. We were called in for an interview, all of us were nervous because none of us had ever been on the radio before. It was really great and very pleasing to hear your own song on the radio.
Stephen McMahon: Although you are in a band, do you still have to work day jobs in-between live shows?
Timeless Lizards: Aaron works in an Irish pub in Luton now and then, Jordan recently worked at Costa but doesn’t anymore, he was just too experimental with the coffees for them. Ollie and I don’t work at the moment, though, we all live at home so there’s no mad rush to get a job although I’ve got a feeling we’ll be needing jobs soon.
Stephen McMahon: How would you like people to respond to your music? Do you wish to connect emotionally with the audience or is it just about having a party?
Timeless Lizards: I would like our music to hopefully be appealing to everybody, it seems to us like there’s a song for everyone in our set, and they’re all quite different songs, but of course it’s fun and we just want everyone to have a good time enjoy the music and keep dancing.
Stephen McMahon: Do you ever see your sound changing from the type of music you write?
Timeless Lizards: Yes!!! Our sound changes every time we write a new song, but mostly it’s all still indie rock but every song is influenced by a different band before we had names for the songs we would just call them names of bands that they sounded like. For example, Daze was called Fuzz Yuck because we wanted to write like the band “YUCK”.
Stephen McMahon: Do you ever see Timeless Lizards expanding with more members?
Timeless Lizards: I would definitely be open to expanding but there’s something nicer about just four guys making a big sound rather than lots of people on stage. So many people put extra keyboards and percussion loops on track these days so we would probably try something like that first.
You can find Timeless Lizards on Facebook. Why not give them a Like and show your support?
